Advertisement

Related Content

The Akkadian/Sumerian poet Enheduanna (2285-2250 BCE) is the world’s first author known by name and was the daughter of Sargon of Akkad (Sargon the Great). Whether Enheduanna was, in fact, a blood relative of Sargon’s or the title was figurative is not known. It is clear, however, that Sargon placed enormous trust in Enheduanna in elevating... [continue reading]

Enheduanna (2285-2250 BCE) is the world’s first author and was the daughter (either literally or figuratively) of the great empire-builder Sargon of Akkad. Her name translates from the Akkadian as `high priestess of An’, the god of the sky or heaven, though the name `An’ could also refer to the moon god Nannar as in the translation, `en-priestess... [continue reading]

The Enuma Elish (also known as The Seven Tablets of Creation) is the Mesopotamian creation myth whose title is derived from the opening lines of the piece, `When on High'. All of the tablets containing the myth, found at Ashur, Kish, Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh, Sultantepe, and other excavated sites, date to c. 1100 BCE but their colophons... [continue reading]

Eridu (present day Abu Shahrein, Iraq) was considered the first city in the world by the ancient Sumerians and, certainly, is among the most ancient of ruins. Founded in circa 5400 BCE, Eridu was thought to have been created by the gods and was home to the great water god Enki (who, later, would develop from a local god to merge with deities such... [continue reading]

The Fertile Crescent is the region in the Middle East which curves, like a quarter-moon shape, from the Persian Gulf, through modern-day southern Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and northern Egypt. The term was first coined in 1916 by the Egyptologist James Henry Breasted in his work Ancient Times: A History of the Early World, where he wrote, “This... [continue reading]

I am a professor of History and Humanities and a specialist in Sumer and Akkad. I purchased this book in preparation of a lecture that I was going to deliver to a group of people. I was immediately disappointed in fact returned the book two days later. The book does not offer the reader the information that he or she really needs to cover on this subject... [continue reading]

This is the 11th tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh. The cuneiform text on this tablet is startlingly similar to the Biblical story of Noah and his ark in the Book of Genesis. When George Smith, an assistant in the British Museum first read this inscription, he jumped and rushed about the room in a great state of excitement, and to the astonishment of those present... [continue reading]

To the people of the ancient world, there was no doubt that the soul of a human being survived bodily death. Whatever an individual's personal views were on the subject, culturally they were brought up with the understanding that the dead lived on in another form that still required some kind of sustenance, in an afterlife that was largely dictated by several... [continue reading]

Gilgamesh is the semi-mythic King of Uruk best known from The Epic of Gilgamesh (written c. 2150-1400 BCE) the great Sumerian/Babylonian poetic work which pre-dates Homer’s writing by 1500 years and, therefore, stands as the oldest piece of epic western literature. Gilgamesh’s father was the Priest-King Lugalbanda (who is featured in... [continue reading]

“Göbekli Tepe” (“Hill with a Navel”, or “Potbelly Hill”) is found approximately 16 km (10 miles) northeast of Şanlıurfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey once named “Edessa” and known as “the City of the Prophets”. While this nearby city has a rich religious history, just how far... [continue reading]